Today, information technology (IT) resources are managed using a variety of incompatible and often proprietary interfaces and protocols. Requirements for management information regarding the resources need to be specifically programmed to address new resources and in many cases the specific programming is not updated as new versions of the managed elements become available.
The problem of managing disparate managed elements is becoming more acute as systems are increasingly developed using managed elements that are deployed in remote locations and accessed via information networks, such as the Internet. Generally, the resources to be managed are not readily identifiable when the resources are highly distributed and independent of one another. Further, it is difficult to obtain information regarding properties and attributes of the resources, and protocols for exchanging management information with the resources. A further difficulty lies in determining the relationships among the resources used in a system to pinpoint operational problems when one or more of the resources do not respond as expected.
In today's high density data centers (HDDC) that support computing on demand and dynamic adaptive infrastructures, the complexity imposed on the data center supervisor to create and maintain a plethora of proprietary scripts and commands is not sustainable. The complexity and speed of dynamic change experienced in today's HDDC require that hardware vendors standardize the command set used to configure, boot and re-provision the hardware, software, and other managed elements.